D-Day: Who’s in and who’s out at Manchester United?

At the end of last season many of the doom mongers were predicting that Manchester United would need a complete overhaul of the playing staff this summer.

It wasn’t just the seventh placed finish which set alarm bells ringing, but also the performance levels, which were so much lower than Manchester United fans have come to expect over the last two decades.

But a few months later, and with the inspirational Louis van Gaal now managing Manchester United, things look very different and the list of potential departures must surely have shrunk.

Because the squad performed brilliantly under their new manager in the pre-season tour of America and virtually all of the players did themselves justice.

But Louis van Gaal made it clear that some players will be leaving the club this summer and suggested that he would let the players know his decision as soon as the squad returned to Manchester.

They got back on Tuesday afternoon and you would imagine that Wednesday would have been a recovery day for the squad. But they will be back on the training field today or tomorrow and, by the end of the week, we will have a much better idea of who stays and who goes.

Indeed you could easily imagine that Louis has spoken to his players already as he said last week:

“I shall make judgments after the tour,” Van Gaal said. “I have let all the players play so I know now more than I did before. But in football you have to judge. Always you have to give a chance to a player to make a transfer when you see that his perspective is not so high to play. You have to say it in advance. When you say it on 31 August it’s too late. I shall say to the players what I think after the tour.”

In short, we believe that Ashley Young has done enough to retain his place in the squad as a utility player this summer.

Wilfried Zaha may go out on loan again. Meanwhile, the likes of Anderson and Nani will surely get their marching orders.

The futures of Javier Hernandez, who performed well in America, Marouane Fellaini and Tom Cleverley are much more difficult to predict. But, we feel that the former deserves to stay and the other two don’t.